Dad Pays Daughter $200 to Quit The Facebook

Dad Pays Daughter $200 to Quit The Facebook

How much would it cost for you to walk away from Facebook for five months? One father is paying his daughter $200 to do just that.

Massachusetts dad, Paul Baier, even drew up a contract with his 14 year old daughter. The contract was actually her idea – because she said she needed money, and found that Facebook was distracting her.

Us too, honey. Us too.

So, Baier, a a vice president at a Boston-area energy firm, drew up the totally-not-legally-binding contract seen above. Here’s the text of it:

Facebook Deactivation Agreement

I [name withheld] agree to deactivate my Facebook Account from 2/14/13 to 6/26/13.

In return, my dad, Paul Baier, agrees to pay me $50.00 on 4/15/13, and $150.00 on 6/26/13. He/she will have access to my Facebook to change the password and deactivate the account. This will prevent me from re-activating the account in the future. I plan to use the money for the following purposes: stuff.

Signed and agreed to in full:

Baier told The Daily Dot that his daughter does intend to return to Facebook after June 26th, when she receives the money.

Critics of the plan (of which there are many in Baier’s blog comments), make numerous attacks on Baier’s parenting, the legality of it, and the rewarding of doing – essentially – nothing.

I think this is a great plan. First off, a dad and his daughter are talking about social media. Second, this is no worse than some of those “contracts” students sign in school to pledge not to do drugs or drink. It’s understood by everyone that it’s not a legally-binding contract, but a symbolic pledge to follow-through.

And really, Baier can give his daughter money for whatever he’d like…he’s her father. This is just a creative way to make her work for it and watch her sweat over not being on Facebook.

I think this is a great idea. But if Baier really wants to drive her crazy and go one step further, he should give her computer a static IP address and create router rules that block her computer’s IP address from Facebook, so it won’t even load. This can be done fairly easily on most modern routers, or with various tutorials out there.

Good luck to Baier and his daughter – who seem like they’ve got a totally winning relationship.

Thanks to Matt Peregoy for pointing us to this story (like, 2 days ago)